ABSTRACT

In this book, Hannes Charen presents an alternative examination of kinship structures in political theory.

Employing a radically transdisciplinary approach, On the Politics of Kinship is structured in a series of six theoretical vignettes or frames. Each chapter frames a figure, aspect, or relational context of the family or kinship. Some chapters are focused on a critique of the family as a state-sanctioned institution, while others cautiously attempt to recast kinship in a way to reimagine mutual obligation through the generation of kinship practices understood as a perpetually evolving set of relational responses to finitude. In doing so, Charen considers the ways in which kinship is a plastic social response to embodied exposure, both concealed and made more evident in the bloated, feeble, and broken individualities and nationalities that seem to dominate our social and political landscape today.

On the Politics of Kinship will be of interest to political theorists, feminists, anthropologists, and social scientists in general.

chapter |17 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|32 pages

Does the Family Exist?

Structures and Practices of Kinship

chapter 2|23 pages

Patrons of the State

Division of the Public and the Private

chapter 3|26 pages

Myth of “the Family”

Biological, Social, Economic

chapter |13 pages

Excursus

Memory, Relation, Death

chapter 4|36 pages

The Political Theology of the Family

Divine, Romantic, Algorithmic

chapter 5|27 pages

Extraction, Intimacy, and Kinship